Campaign vs tree cutting reaches court

URDANETA CITY—Environmental advocates have petitioned a court here to stop the cutting of trees along MacArthur Highway (Manila North Road) traversing five towns and this city to save the remaining trees that are to be displaced by a road-widening project.

In a June 5 petition for injunction, Virginia Pasalo and Julia Senga also asked the court to issue a temporary environmental protection order (Tepo) for the trees along the national road.

Pasalo is director of the Women in Development Foundation and commissioner of the Pangasinan Historical and Cultural Commission, while Senga is a trustee of the International Visitors’ Leadership Program Philippines.

The petition was supported by the Save the Trees National Coalition, which was launched on Thursday, World Environment Day.

Named respondents were Executive Secretary Paquito Ochoa Jr., Environment Secretary Ramon Paje, Public Works Secretary Rogelio Singson, Department of Environment and Natural Resources Regional Director Samuel Peñafiel, and Department of Public Works and Highways District Engineer Emmanuel Diaz.

Patria Gwen Borcena, development and environmental sociologist of Green Research, an environmental research group chaired by running priest, Fr. Robert Reyes, said her group hoped the court would immediately decide on the petition to save 770 trees from the road-widening project.

The project, which spans the towns of Rosales, Villasis, Binalonan, Pozorrubio and Sison and this city, required the cutting of 1,829 trees along the 42-kilometer stretch of the highway.

The government work crew managed to clear 1,059 trees when the tree-cutting permit issued to the DPWH by the DENR regional office expired in February. The DPWH district office in Rosales town has asked for an extension of the permit.

Borcena said Ochoa was included in the petition because of a memorandum he issued to Paje in July 2012 that granted tree-cutting exemptions in eight regions where there are DPWH projects.

She said the memorandum appeared to contradict President Aquino’s environmental policy, which said that the environment should not be sacrificed for short-term economic gains and profits.

In opposing the granting of a new tree-cutting permit to the DPWH, Borcena said DPWH contractors had violated the expired 90-day tree-cutting permit earlier granted to them.

“They girdled the trees, in the process preventing nutrients from reaching the treetop. This was not in the permit,” Borcena said.